Void Wings
by Heir of the void
Summary: When a regiment of the Imperial Guard is lost in the Warp, they emerge above a system home to a Feral World, whose inhabitants lay besieged by heretofore unseen monstrosities.
1. Chapter 1

Somewhere in the near-infinite sea that is the warp, something flickered. This was, in itself, not at all an uncommon occurrence. However this was not a flicker in one of any of the brief-lived energy fields that appered more or less randomly in the Warp, but in the Gellar Field protecting the Imperial Frigate _Glory of His Wrath._

On its own, this flicker was not enough to pose a serious concern to the mighty two-kilometer-long human vessel. However, the flicker in the Gellar Field cause a small trickle of power that would have been expended by the Field to instead be returned to the main reactor of the craft.

This caused the plasma storm raging in the magnetogravitic containment fields of the power plant to, just for a moment, become more intense in a single small region, a cube just one inch on a side. This sent a ripple outward from this portion of reactor, disrupting the power feeds sent to the main engine of the craft.

The engine sputtered. The strange arcane energies it exerted holding the ship in the Warp failed, and the _Glory of His Wrath_ dropped into realspace on the outskirts of an uncharted system.

"Report," Captain Octavius said smoothly. "What's going on out there?" The stern, older Commanding Officer of the starship placed one cybernetic hand on the table.

"First of all," The Chief Engineseer said, "The Warp Drive is out of commission."

"Dammit." Octavius said, "How long until that's back online?"

"Unclear." The Chief Engineseer said. "The power surge that disabled the Drive was six hours ago, and my entire department has been working full-time to restore it to functionality. However, there were a number of unforeseeable secondary failures in the drive system that caused further damage, so repairs are likely to take a matter of weeks."

"Well that's just wonderful." Colonel Richardson said, folding his arms on the table, which doubled as a cognitor plot readout. "There is another matter I would like to discuss. Namely, the planet, third from the system primary, that registers as potentially habitable."

"It is not listed on any of the major charts of human settled worlds." The Navigation officer said. "However, that hardly rules out even a significant human presence here."

"Have we attempted contact?" Richardson asked.

"Yes." Communications said. "We attempted to hail them via Astropathic communications only a brief time after arrival. However, there was no response. We have resorted to using more primitive methods of communications. We have sent hails in every major dialect of Low Gothic in the databanks. Given the lightspeed delay, the hails should have reached this world some time ago." The man checked his watch. "Assuming a prompt reaction, a response would be expected in about five minutes."

"Sensors, what can you tell me about this planet." Richardson asked, cupping his chin in his hand.

"Standard world, much like Holy Terra would have been several dozen millennia ago." The Sensors Officer replied, pressing a series of runes on his control panel for the cognitor plot. "Much of the surface appears to be in a feral state. This, however," he waved an arm over the plot. "Is the major exception."

Richardson, Octavius and the other attending officers leaned in with interest. What the saw were several colossal structures, of considerable size, if not sophistication, even by Imperial standards. They appered to be three concentric, massive walls. The innermost wall was helpfully labeled as being one hundred kilometers in diameter, with the others space out with another hundred kilometers between each of the walls.

The officers inspected the plot readout for several minutes. Filially, the Captain asked the one question that was on the mind of every man present.

"So, is this the only enclave of human settlement on this planet?" Octavius asked, already partially knowing the answer.

"That is correct, sir." Sensors said.

"Now why in the name of Terra might that be?"

"So," Lieutenant Mephisto said, looking over his equipment one last time. "What do you think we'll find down there?"

"What do _I_ think we'll find down there?" Sergeant Patanella said, rolling her eyes. "That's all anyone's been talking about ever since they woke us up. You damn well _know_ what I think we'll find down there."

"A whole lot of nothing." Mephisto responded, making air quotes. "Those things down there, they've got to be walls, right?"

"I don't see what else they'd be."

"Right."

The lander began to shake around the two troopers, jostling them violently as it entered the upper atmosphere of the unidentified planet.

"They looked like they were in pretty good shape from the scans." Mephisto continued, unperturbed. "I don't see how they would look like that without some pretty heavy upkeep being done on a regular basis."

Patanella narrowed her eyes at her commanding officer. And how exactly did _you_ get to look at the orbital scans?"

"I have my ways."

Patanella rolled her eyes again as the shaking of the lander intensified.

The lander came down like a comet, streaking across the abandoned outer wall Maria. It continued west over Wall Rose, fire trailing from the ablative plating lining the exterior of the craft and plasma flaring from the retrorockets slowing its inevitable descent toward the surface.

The craft crossed the farmland enfolded by wall rose, peasants, nobles, and merchants alike turning and looking at its flaming descent.

As the lander crossed over the devastated Trost District, the flames trailing off its hull began to disappear as its flight slowed noticeably. It did not go entirely unnoticed, however, and several scholarly men continued to trace its descent from places atop the walls.

Human beings, however, we not the only things that noticed the (relatively) small craft descending, and as it dropped, they turned and began to slowly plod toward it.

"Eren! Levi!"

The leader of the Special Operations Squad put down his feather duster and turned toward the excited brown-haired scientist currently running unto the room of the massive, mostly abandoned castle he was cleaning.

"What is it?" Levi asked.

"Guess what!" Hanji panted

"You were finally transferred out?" Levi said, not a trace of sarcasm evident in his admittedly plain voice.

"No!" She said, "You know the shooting star! The one from this morning? Well, I talked to the higher-ups, and they approved my idea to sortie from the walls to investigate it!"

"Wonderful." Levi said. "And how exactly is this supposed to advance the objectives of the scouting legion?"

"The objective of the Recon Corps is to explore the world, not just kill titans." Eren said.

"Besides, the titans seem to be reacting to the object somehow." Hanji interjected, holding up a finger. "If this shooting star is some form of titan beacon, imagine how helpful that could be on missions!"

"It does have potential." Levi mused. "When are we setting out?"

"As soon as we can rally the legion!" Hanji said. "We'll be setting out in a manner of hours."

The lander, on a combat trajectory, came down hard. The moment the craft had settled, Lieutenant Mephisto was rallying his platoon, and making his way to the megar vehicle bay on the lander.

"So," he said, as his command squad formed up around him, "What do you bet that we'll find out there?"

"I don't know," Patanella responded, signaling her squad into formation around her. "I don't think it'll be anything."

"You wanna bet on that?" Mephisto asked.

"Sure. Fifty thrones says its nothing."

"Big spender. I suppose if you're willing to put your money where your mouth is... Well, anyway here we are."

Mephisto reached out and grasped the large wheel attached to the front of the pressure door leading to the vehicle bay. With a grunt, he shifted it, and it began to turn. Within seconds, the lock was disabled. He pushed on the door, feeling the slight resistance of a pressure differential, then opened it. There was a hissing sound as the pressures equalized, then a brief, mild rush of wind blew back down the corridor.

"Higher pressure." Mephisto said, "and, if I had to guess," He flexed his legs a few times, "lower surface gravity. Interesting.

"Congratulations on stating the obvious." Patanella said.

The pair walked into the vehicle bay. It was a large, wide open, space, with a several Chimera APCs, a pair of Leman Russ Main Battle Tanks, and a single Basiilik artillery piece. The floors and walls were dull metal, flat with the exception of the massive clamps holding the vehicles in place, with a massive banner bearing the Imperial Aquila on the rear wall. They appered to be the first of the non-scout units to have arrived.

The front ramp of the lander had been dropped, allowing natural sunlight, _natural_ sunlight, to stream into the bay.

"Looks like the scouts already rolled out." Patanella said, gesturing to the empty clamps which would have held a Taros Scout Vehicle.

"Now who's stating the obvious?"

Mephisto and Patanella walked into the bay. Mephisto made his way to his Command Chimera, a fully-upgraded vehicle with a turret-mounted multilaser, hull-mounted heavy flamer, and a pair of deadly hunter-killer missiles mounted on the flanks of the vehicle. Regs said only one per Chimera, but Mephisto had always said that two was twice the fun.

He usually found cause to deploy them, too.

Mephisto was climbing into the command cupola of his vehicle and Patanella was rallying her squad when Mephisto heard the unmistakable sound of an engine approaching the main bay.

Abruptly, the scout Taros returned, coming careening into the main bay. It executed a perfect skew turn, and barely braked before it hit the far wall.

"They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me! Dear Emperor!"

Mephisto barely had time to turn towards the front ramp of the vehicle bay before something came running into the chamber. It looked like a naked man, except it was twice as tall, appered to lack any form of visable genatiliia, and it had an oversized, grossly enlarged mouth, from which an arm wearing the customary red of the 33rd Grenadiers.

Mephisto was only stunned for a moment by the bizarre sight. Then he raised his arm and pointed at the creature.

"BURN THAT MOTHERFRAKER DOWN!" He shouted, diving deeper into the guts of the Chimera.

Patanella's squad of veteran soldiers reacted instantly, lowering their lasguns, drawing beads on the creature, and firing. Ten beams of ruby-red light appered, lancing outwards in an instant and striking the creature, destroying and igniting flesh.

The thing turned, somehow surviving the orgy of destruction being wrecked upon its body. It took a single step towards the squad of guardsmen.

Then the heavy multilaser came online and began spewing energy bolts at the creature. It tettered for a moment, then fell, head utterly vaporized and flesh smouldering.

In the gunner's seat of the Chimmeria, Mephisto sat, fingers on the butterfly triggers of the multilaser.

"What the _warp_ was that thing?"

The door to the 'bridge' of the lander, more of a cockpit really, cycled open, admitting a frantic messenger to the space.

"Sir... sir." He panted, bowing low out of exhaustion as much of exhaustion as audience, "We're under attack!"

The Commander of the lander turned to face the messenger, his chair squeaking as it rotated. "Report."

"There are things attacking the lander!"

"What do you mean?" The Commander demanded. This was a special mission well out of the ordinary, something that could make his career if he handled it well. Or, of course, get him executed if it went poorly. He made the sign of the Aquila. "Are they Daemons?"

"No... At least, I don't think so." The messenger said. "Creatures of flesh but... strange flesh. They seem mindless, but they seek to devour the crew."

"What happened?" The Commander demanded. This was great. It looked like they had landed on some kind of death world.

"We sent out a scouting party." The messenger said, still breathless. "Only half of them returned."

"Put the outside cameras onscreen." The Commander ordered, pointing at the large viewscreen normally used for providing an exterior view of the lander during flight.

The screen crackled to life. What it showed was horrifying. Several of the creatures, some of them taller than the ten-meter-tall lander, had collected on one side of the spacecraft and appeared to be pushing on it mindlessly.

"What do we do?" The messenger whispered, making the sign of the Aquila. He was not a rookie; he had seen combat before, against renegades on his homeworld. However, this, these giant creatures, were like nothing he had ever seen before. "Emperor protect us, they're like Warp-damned _titans_."

"Send word to the passenger bays." The Commander said. "Tell the squadleaders to begin rallying the troops."

"Yes, sir. Where should I tell them to deploy, sir?"

"Focus on the Starboard sally ports, where these things are gathering, and in the forward vehicle bay." He paused, then turned to look at the helmsman. "How long until you can get us airborne?"

"Not soon, sir." The man responded with a grimace. "The settlement was in retrograde relative to us when we landed, so we burned up a lot of fuel on the way down. I could get us off the ground, but I can't guarantee we have enough juice to clear the atmosphere, let alone get into a stable orbit.

The commander swore. "Wonderful. That means we get to fight them on the ground." His head swiveled toward the sensors man. "You! Sensors! How long until the Frigate gets here?"

"Over a day, sir." The sensors man said. "The launched us ahead, and in any case we can accelerate harder than a full warship. If they launched another lander to relieve us, it would still take hours to get here."

"More news on that front." The communications man said. "The planet it between us and the Frigate. Unless they go radically off course, we can't broadcast a signal to them without some kind of orbital relay, which, of course, this planet doesn't have."

'

"What the hell was that thing?" Mephisto shouted, as he waved the crew of his Chimera to their stations. He jumped out of the APC and ran across the floor of the vehicle bay to where the returned scout was cowering next to his Taros.

"What was that thing?" he demanded, grabbing the man's shoulder and shaking him.

"I... I don't know. They were... They were like Titans!' The man babbled, not meeting Mephisto's gaze.

"That one was a lot of things, but it wasn't like a Battle Titan." He said, forcing the man to look into his eyes. "Are there more of them?"

"Yes, huge ones! Things like men the size of buildings!" The scout said, shifting frantically, as if he was trying to escape.

"Great." Mephisto stood up and turned around, leaving the panicked scout where he was sprawled. "We're going to have more of those things incoming." He said, waving a hand and pointing a squad of Grenadiers entering the bay.

"You, go to the arms locker and bring back heavy weapons." He said, looking at the sergeant of the squad. "Ignore the normal limits; bring back as many heavy bolters, autocannons, and lasguns as you can."

"But sir!" One of the men said. "Will those do us any good on these things?"

"They're made of flesh, just like us." Mephisto said, looking over the squad, trying his hardest to project an aura of confidence and authority, the antithesis of what he was currently feeling. That was what these men needed right now, an officer and a leader. "Weaker than us, if what our lasguns did to that one was any indication.

"However, they're huge, so that means they have huge guts. That means we need bigger guns to put holes in them. In fact, tell the first squad you see on the way back to go to the armory with you and help you bring heavy weapons."

"Sir," Another of the soldiers said, stepping forward. "Do you have the authority to authorize the release of so many materials?"

Mephisto looked at her for a moment. "Do you think I have the moral authority to stand here and do nothing while things out there are trying to eat my men?"

"I... I see, sir." The soldier said, and stepped back into line.

"Now go!' He roared.

A few hours after Hanji had come to tell Eren and Levi of the Recon Corps new mission, Eren sat on his horse with the rest of the Legion before the great gate of the Karanese District. Petra and Oluo of the Special Operations Squad sat on their horses next to him. Given the sudden nature of the mission, the Central Command had demanded that the rest of the Special Operations Squad remain behind on defense in case the Titans attack while the Scouting Legion was away.

Personally, Eren wasn't really sure exactly how wise splitting up the Special Operations Squad was, but High command made a lot of decisions that didn't make a whole lot of sense. Take his Titan Shifting ability, for example. Why didn't they want to make more aggressive usage of it? With his power, he could radically redefine the equations for the recapture of Wall Maria.

Still, maybe they had good reasons for wanting to contain him, or even destroy him. Eren looked down at his left thumb, the one he usually bit when activating his Titan Shifting abilities. Was he really a threat to humanity?

"Eren!" He turned. It was Mikasa. She was approaching on horseback, notably out of her position in the complex Recon Corps formation.

"What is it, Mikasa?"

"I haven't been able to see you, Eren." She said quietly, her words barely audible over the bustle of the Scouting Legion soldiers preparing for departure.

"I've missed you too, Mikasa." Eren said. "Listen, if something happens on this mission-"

"No. You need to be careful, Eren." Mikasa said. "But nothing will happen. I won't let anything happen."

"Hey, you two! What are you doing?" Oluo turned around in his saddle to face Eren and Mikasa. "You're out of formation, soldier! You should-"

At that moment, his horse took a step. Oluo bit his tongue, sending up a small shower of blood.

"Don't mind him." Petra said, also turning to face Eren. "But Mikasa, you really should get back in position.

"We're moving out!" Someone shouted from the form of the formation. At the base of the walls, the massive gates separating man from beast began to slowly rumble open.

"Goodbye, Eren." Mikasa said, turning her horse around and weaving it through the thicket of soldiers to her position.

Ahead of them, the massive gate reached its fully raised position. Slowly, the Scouting Legion began to file out of the gate and into the territory of the enemies of mankind.

The second titan appeared a few minutes after the first had been dispatched. In the intervening period, the corpse of the first titan, or what was left of it after it went through the wringer, had disintegrated in a cloud of steam, leaving behind the mutilated body of a man in the uniform of a scout of the 33rd Alkanian Grenadiers.

Even once the body was fully dissolved, no one dared approach the corpse of the scout.

The men, in whispered conversations among themselves, had begun to refer to the strange, massive foes the scouts promised awaited just outside the lander.

Mephisto wasn't really sure why the commander didn't simply roll up the front ramp of the vehicle bay and be done with it. Perhaps he was concerned that the titans would be able to tip the vehicle if they didn't have somewhere to attack, doing damage that would be, given their present situation, irreparable.

When the second titan leaned its head around the edge of the vehicle bay, Mephisto was running around like a petrasquirl with its head cut off, trying desperately to get the makeshift gathering of soldiers into a shape where they could fight off the soon-to-be attacking foes.

The men stared at the titan for a moment. The titan gazed back, its blank eyes seemingly empty yet filled with hunger.

"FIRE!" Mephisto shouted, pointing a finger at the head of the titan, "Lasguns only, volley fire!"

The troopers raised their weapons and complied. The barrels of nearly fifty lasguns fired beams of ruby light, which lanced across the bay to strike the head of the creature.

One after another, the beams appeared on target, gouging out chunks of flesh and igniting tissue. Wet material trailing steam fountained off the disintegrating body of the titan. The creature screamed, then slowly began to fall over.

It hit the ground with a massive thud. Mephisto looked in awe at the size of the creature. It had to be fifteen meters tall, nearly half again as large as the lone Knight attached to the regiment. He took a brief step forward as steam poured into the vehicle bay. Somewhere overhead, sensors recognized the abnormally high temperature and fans began to whir, sucking the steam upwards and away.

The body of the titan twitched. It was a small motion, only a slight shift in the position of the arms and legs.

By bye the Emperor the thing was _moving_.

"That isn't fair." Mephisto muttered. "You take off a 'nid's head and it stays down. _You_ don't get to be different.

Then the flesh around the severed, burned stump of the creature's neck began to shift, and _flow_ like water. It pushed through the charred sections as a spur of bone began to extend from the fallen creature's spine.

Mephisto swore. "Start moving people! Before that thing gets back up! Move the Earthshaker into position for direct fire on my word."

He looked back at the steadily regenerating titan. "I want it ready in thirty seconds!"

As the crew readied the gun, loading a massive round into the breach of the weapon, the titan began to climb to its feet as its head swiftly reformed. It was a race. Would the gun crew get ready first, or would the titan finish regenerating. For the Imperials, it was a race they had to win, but victory gave no hope of survival. If losing its head didn't bother this creature, what good would an Earthshaker shell do? If-

The titan won.

The creature, now in a kneeling position, reached out with both hands towards the desperate Guardsmen. As one massive hand swung toward him, Mephisto leapt to the side in a roll, narrowly avoiding being snatched up by the hand of the creature.

As he recovered from his roll, he drew his laspistol from his hip and began to empty the charge pack into the mountain of titan-flesh before him. His shots burned flesh and chipped bone, and the creature began to pull the hand back.

Others weren't as lucky. The titan reached in to one of the blocks of Guardsmen firing at it and, heedless of their lasfire directed at its head and upper body, grabbed two men out of the group and raised them towards its mouth.

Then, in a seemingly slow, deliberate motion, it _ate _them.

A second later, with a massive roar, the Earthshaker gun fired. The shell cracked as it shot across the bay, and struck the titan in the sternum and penetrated.

An instant later, the shell detonated with an incredible roar that made the sound of firing seem tame in comparison. The titan held itself in place for a moment, then slowly crashed to the ground once more.

"DON'T LET UP! CHECK FOR A PULSE!" Mephisto shouted, pointing his laspistol at the titan.

Slowly, its body vanished under a hail of laser fire as it disintegrated.

Then the third titan appeared.

Colonel Richardson looked at the wall of Battle Honors collected by the 33rd Alkanian Grenadiers that stood in front of his commander's desk. It was distressingly bare. Most of the 'awards' present were little more than consolation prizes for the successful completion of campaigns. Three awards, out of a total of four present, were for that type of service were present: one for the participation in a campaign to eliminate Orks from a minor Agri world, and two for Campaigns for the suppression of Renegades, once on their homeworld of Alkania and once on another small planet.

The fourth was an award for best parade dress and standards at the end of the Ork campaign.

That was before his time. Richardson had only taken command of the regiment a short time ago, just before they left on their mission to travel to the Hive World of Janarius Secundus to participate in a defense against a major Chaos incursion.

In all its previous campaigns, the 33rd had performed, to say the least, disappointingly. In one campaign against rebels, the first after the unit was raised; the 33rd had performed acceptably as a rear-area garrison unit, but saw very little action beyond minor partisan actions, which inflicted grossly disproportionate losses on the unit.

However, in the second campaign, it was deployed on the front lines, and that was where things started to go downhill. The 33rd had been deployed late in what turned out to be the climactic battle of the war, with orders to relieve a badly stressed veteran unit on the Imperial Guard's left flank.

They fought acceptably for a few days, but then when the overstressed flank received orders to fall back, they failed to execute the maneuver properly, and several thousand soldiers had been cut off and destroyed by the enemy.

After that, the Grenadiers, to put it politely, fell back rather faster than ordered, nearly causing the flank to collapse and badly disrupting the oblique flanking attack that the Imperial General had planned. Fortunately, the Salamanders arrived just in time to launch a massive drop pod assault and crush the enemy center, saving the battle.

Then, when in battle against Orks, they had finally been furnished with the vehicles need to keep up with an armored drive and allow them to be properly employed as grenadiers. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, including bad weather, difficult terrain, and underskilled drivers, they failed to keep pace with an armored thrust, leaving the flank of the Imperial advance dangerously exposed. When they arrived in time to participate in the resulting battle, which severely disrupted the human timetables, several elements of the Regiment broke in the face of the enemy.

The casualties that resulted, and the purges that followed, left the regiment significantly under strength. By random chance, they happened to be close to their regimental homeworld at the time, so the unit had been refurbished with new vehicles, and a large number of _women_, draw directly from Alkania attached to the _Glory of His Wrath_, and sent off to battle the heretics.

On paper, there was no reason for the Regiment's disappointing performance. It was well-equipped, unusually so, in fact, and the men and women of the regiment performed well above average on the Standard Ability and Aptitude Test, which the Administratum had for some reason gotten around to issuing to the members of the regiment.

That however, stood in stark contrast to their past and present performance. Sending a lander out to an unknown, possibly hostile world with only a standard assault loadout of fuel, not enough to return to the mothership? Failing to use exterior sensors and all available scouts to properly establish the circumstances in which battle was being done?

What was wrong with this unit?

So if the equipment and the quality of the men weren't the problem, maybe the leadership was. The previous Commanding Officer of the Regiment, on Colonel Oscar, was the first suspect, and, after Richardson looked through his files, it became immediately clear what the problem was.

The man was a fracking lunatic. He had a focus on discipline and dress standards far beyond what was reasonable, even for a military unit. Reports from the previous campaign indicated that the men were spending far more time on their uniforms and parade formations than on battlefield doctrine training and practical combat skills.

Richardson began looking through the accumulated papers and dataslates on his desk, looking for a training schedule. Something part of him at the back of his mind had been whispering to him that there was something wrong, but he had dismissed its objections as being simply due to differences between how this unit and his previous one operated. He had simply been too busy with all of the various tasks involved in taking command of a new regiment to be able to examine the problem areas too closely.

Now, however, he saw the trouble for what it was. After several minutes of searching, he managed to find a sample schedule for a basic mechanized infantryman under his command. Richardson looked at the schedule for a moment, simply staring. This was insane. The man this was taken from was spending nearly _six hours_ per day on drill training, polish, and other such thing. This was disregarding any sort of combat training or maintenance duty. As Richardson took a closer look, her saw that many of the standard drills and recommended practices for a unit of this size had been eliminated in favor of these absurd 'discipline and drill' activities. None of these men were new recruits, were they?

Richardson had inherited a unit that could polish it buttons and shine their lasguns, but could hardly do anything else.

_By the Emperor_! He thought, a sudden realization dawning on him. _Will I be responsible for the men that expedition loses? Is his my fault for not looking into this matter sooner?_

He sat down and opened up a feed from the battle on the surface on one of his dataslates. It was still running on a significant time delay, given the distance between the ship and the planet, and it was of poor quality, merely a compilation of sensor readouts and feeds from the security cameras onboard the lander stitched together by a team in the sensor department. However, it was all he had, so Richardson took his only opportunity to watch as his men died.

Melissa Highstorm was new to the Scouting Legion. Prior to joining, she had never actually seen a titan, something that was quickly rectified on her first expedition beyond the walls. She rode in formation, having already watched three of her comrades be devoured by titans.

The Scouting Legion had been riding hard for hours, and according to the 'whispered' communications between the men, was now drawing closer to its destination. Odd bangs and cracks had been heard in the distance, and they had only grown in volume as they approached the mission target. The strange sounds were making everyone nervous, but Melissa was at the same time glad to finally have a real mission from the scouting legion, and the idea of mission had her intrigued, to say the very least.

At present, Melissa was riding downhill through a forest, and she could see a column of smoke rising on from just ahead. She steered her horse around a fallen tree as the recon man in her element, the lead one in the formation, withdrew a pair of binoculars from his pouch and raised them to his eyes.

"Titans ahead." He shouted, as he deftly and rapidly switched between scouting ahead and searching near himself for hazardous terrain. "Prepare to switch to Maneuver Gear!"

Melissa undid the straps holding her gear in place on her horse and readied herself to switch to her Maneuver Gear. As she broke out of the forest and into the clearing where the mission objective had been determined to be, she froze.

There were titans in the mission clearing. Dozens of them, surrounding an object like nothing she had ever seen. It looked a bit like a brick, and a bit like a building, but it was at a slight incline, possibly due to all the titans that appeared to be pushing on it. It was dozens of yards long, several times the height of the tallest titans. The object had windows on it, but they were small, and many of them were obscured by the titans.

As she kicked her horse back into motion, the formation element containing the Special Operations Squad burst into the clearing. Levi, the leader of the team, stood up in his stirrups and fired his grapples, scoring a direct hit on the back of one of the fifteen-meter titan's heads.

He activated his winches in the blink of an eye, and began pulling himself toward the titan.

As he flew through the air, one of the titans toward what Melissa had mentally designated the 'Front' of the object fell, accompanied by a loud roar. As the titan dropped to the ground, Melissa looked at it in horror.

The entire front of the beast was one massive, bloody mess, with steam gushing from the wound. The front of the titan's head had been vaporized, and the nine-meter monster's weak point was, if she was any judge, truly destroyed.

_What kind of weapon could do that?_ She thought, freezing as she marveled at the destructive power of the weapon.

As the titan dropped to the ground, Levi reached the nape of the neck of the titan he had targeted, the twelve-meter beast standing next to the one that had just dropped. He spun as he shot toward its neck, and then fired his grapples to the side just as he approached. It pulled him away from the titan, but he still came close enough to slice out the neck, nearly decapitating the monster as he killed it.

Mephisto waved his arm, clearing some of the steam away from his eyes. The fans were working, but the fallen titans in the hangar were putting off an insane amount of steam, and it was hurting visibility. He clung to the back of the buttoned-up Leman Russ Main Battle Tank and waved his arm forward.

The main Battle Cannon of the tank fired with a crushing roar, sending its massive shell flying into the upper body of an approaching titan. It struck and exploded, sending a blast wave of pressure washing over the assembled guardsmen. The explosion ripped open the upper body of the titan in a cloud of steam, and the beast fell to the deck, unmoving.

_How many of these things are out there_? Mephisto thought, firing his laspistol at a short, for a titan, figure moving in the steam outside the vehicle bay. His firing brought the attention of a nearby squad of guardsmen on his target, and they raised their lasguns and laid down a hail of fire on it.

The battle was going poorly. In one corner of the vehicle bay, a deformed Chimera APC lay smoking where it had ventured too far forward and been stomped to death by a massive titan. Nearly half of the guardsmen who had started the battle were dead now, having been devoured by the beasts or trampled beneath their feet.

As another titan began to walk into the bay, a hail of plasma fire started up. Jets of white-hot energy reached out across the space and struck the seven-meter-tall beast, vaporizing chunks of flesh and leaving burning holes in its unnatural body. The beast toppled and eventually fell, but not before its body was reduced to nearly a skeleton by the attacks.

The ammunition situation was another problem. The advanced force holding the bay had destroyed countless titans in the commander's gambit to empty the surrounding area, but each had absorbed a considerable volume of munitions before finally dying. Soon, the Guardsmen would be down to just their lasguns.

And then they would die.

_But we'll die standing, I suppose_, Mephisto thought, watching grimly as a titan, one a full fifteen meters tall, approached the entrance to the vehicle bay, _just as He asks us to_. What did it matter, now or later? These titans were going to kill them all anyway.

As the titan leaned down to enter the battle, something phenomenal happened. A pair of wires, with what appeared to be spikes mounted on the ends, shot through the air and impacted on the back of the titan's neck. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the wires went taught.

The, what appeared to be a man, attached at the hip to the wires, came flying into the bay, pulled at an insane speed toward the nape of the massive titan's neck. He spun in the air, with two archaic swords in his hands. The man landed on the titan's neck in a standing position, not caring that he was presently parallel to the ground. He slashed, and with a fountaining burst of blood, a chunk of flesh came loose from the titan's neck. It fell, and the man rode it to the ground.

Before it crashed to the deck plate, he fired another pair of wire and flew away.

_The nape of their necks_! Mephisto thought, his courage restored. _We can still win this!_

He began to shout orders.


	2. Chapter 2

The engine of the Chimera APC revved, and the vehicle lurched forward, then began to roll out of the main bay of the lander. Mephisto watched out of the commander's cupola on the top of the vehicle as it moved steadily forward past the dissolving remnants of the slain battle had been fierce. Scores of guardsmen had died before the weak point of the titans had been revealed, and many more had died afterwards in a frenzy to strike down all of the enemy advancing into the bay. Now that the tide of titans seemed to have abated, Mephisto was leading an element of guardsmen out of the vehicle bay to recontour and secure if possible the outside of the lander.

There was a crunch and the Chimera jerked slightly as one tread of the vehicle ran over the skull of a fallen titan. Mephisto watched, doing his best to avoid looking at any of the disturbing... wreckages scattered on either side of his transport. They were far too close to human for his comfort, and many of them bore truly hideous wounds from the desperate battle.

In particular, he tried especially hard not to look at the twitching forms encased in a few of the titan carcases. It was terrible. Mephisto could hardly imagine what those men had gone through and survived, but the commanding officers were almost certain to order them purged due the possible taint they had potentially been exposed to.

Mephisto shook his head and looked straight ahead.

A squad of infantryman detached from the main body standing in formation in the hangar bay and began picking their way through the maze of fallen titans toward the Chimera. Moving slow as it was, they had no trouble catching up with it, and they quickly fell into formation for infantry escorting a moving armored vehicle.

"So," Patanella said, falling into place with her men, assuming a position that put her close enough to the cupola of the APC to shout to its occupant over rumble of the vehicle's engine. "That was something else, sir."

"Agreed." Mephisto shook his head. "I'd sure as hel like to know what exactly those thing were. They killed a lot of good men today."

"Don't be so sure its over." Patanella said, as the leading treads of the Chimera reached the ramp leading out of the hanger bay. "And on a completely different topic..." She looked around furtively, then continued. "Are you worried about the state of the training of the men, sir?"

"Yes." Mephisto said, without preamble. "I mean, look at what's happening right now. We just landed on what is seeming to be a hostile world, then came under attack by creatures no one has ever seen or heard of before. And what are the men doing? Digging in? Establishing fortifications? No, they're standing for inspection by the mission commander.

[x]

Melissa Highstorm had no idea what she was seeing.

She had been stationed on guard duty, a position which left her standing near one end of the strange object with her maneuver gear at the ready, doing a whole lot of nothing. It was boring, but at least it gave her time to think. At present, she had been thinking about the strange thing that the Scouting Legion had come so far to find.

The titans had rushed the area to the front of the thing, but it had produced a series of very loud bang and cracks, and none of the titans returned. On a few occasions, brilliant beams of light had shot out from the front of the object, but for the past few minutes, everything had been quiet.

Taken together, the strange events had greatly unnerved the commanders, and none of the Recon Corps leadership wanted to order troops forward to run reconnaissance on that part of the object just yet.

Looking at the strange object that had fallen from the sky, Melissa was reminded, for some reason she couldn't hope to explain, of a ship. It was something in the overall shape of the thing, of the lines and contours that formed the object. She knew it would seem irrational, but still...

Now a new sound was issuing out of the object. It was a strange, rumbling noise, one that called to mind something heavy vibrating very quickly. As the level of the sound rose, something unlike anything Melissa had ever seen rolled out from the front of the object.

The vehicle moving out from the object was larger than one of the Scouting Legion wagons, and painted a deep red color. It was all sharp lines and hard angles, and appered to be made of metal rather than the strong, light wood the Corps vehicles. The thing rested on a pair of slowly rotating strips of black material. Vaguely, Melissa remembered Hanji had once come up with a similar system and referred to the moving parts as 'threads'. The 'all-terrain wagon' she had mounted them on had fail, but this vehicle seemed to be having no trouble moving, even if at a slow, lumbering pace.

Numerous metal pieces of indescribable design and manufacture studded the entire surface of the object. In particular, a short, stubby barrel which seemed somehow reminiscent of the guns used by the rest of the Military protruded from the front of the vehicle. Much more obviously threatening was the strange, square-edged thing which protruded from the front of the top of the vehicle, which had what was obviously some form of weapon mounted on it.

Melissa took a step backwards, stumbled, and almost fell as the top piece of the vehicle rotated toward her. She readied her maneuver gear, but at this close range, she wasn't really sure what good it would do. Legion soldiers were equipped to fight titans, not other humans, and certainly not... whatever this was.

The bizarre vehicle stopped in place, its treads grinding to a halt. It did nothing for a moment, then something like a trap door on the top of the upper protrusion of the vehicle jerked in place then began to rise.

Melissa's hand went to the hilt of her sword.

Something began to rise out of the top of the vehicle.

It was human.

"Hello." The man said. He was wearing something that vaguely resembled a military uniform, and had black hair, dark eyes, and pale skin. "I don't suppose you could take me to your leaders?"

[x]

Mephisto carefully guided the driver of his Chimera as the man drove the vehicle at a walking pace after the girl who was allegedly leading him to commander of the expedition. At first, he had been concerned about walking into a trap, but as he looked around and saw the weapons the locals were using, he became less concerned.

He didn't see anything more advanced than sword on any of them. He spotted a few of what looked like pistol holsters on a couple of the soldiers, but he was yet to see any actual weapons. In any event, he was still wearing his flak vest and helmet, and trusted them to stop just about any basic black powder weapons.

As he drove through what was looking like a small but competently built military encampment, Mephisto looked around at the local flora. It appered to be what was similar to what was standard on any number of habitable worlds, with the exception of the local Megafauna.

He shuddered as he thought of them. It was strange, really. He knew, intellectually, as an officer of the guard, that there were much more hideous being out in the universe, but something about these was just... off. Maybe it was their seeming lack of intelligence. He knew that would make them easier to fight on the battlefield, but the way they had just kept coming, wave after wave of colossal bodies, was scary.

After a few more minutes of slow driving, the girl led Mephisto to what appered to be a command tent. For some reason, they always, across time and space, appered to have a certain look to them.

The girl approached one of the soldiers standing guard and began to talk to him in low, whispered tones. The other soldiers appered to be looking at the Chimera, fear evident on their features. It was funny, really. Mephisto had never heard of anyone being scared of a Chimera before. I suppose its all in the novelty. For all I know, these people would think we're pansies for being scared of these titans.

The girl walked back toward the Chimera. For some reason, it didn't seem to make her as scared as it did the other locals.

"Hey, Starman!" The girl said. "Commander Erwin and Captain Levi will be seeing you know."

Mephisto climbed out of the commander's cupola on his APC and down to the ground, not for the first time thanking the Emperor that these locals had retained the standard Gothic dialect. It made things exponentially easier, not having to wait for the Glory of His Wrath to send down some Cogboys to figure out a translation system.

"So, before we go in, is there anything I should know about these commanders?" Mephisto asked, deliberately dragging his feet as he walked toward the command tent.

"Commander Erwin is the leader of the whole Scouting Legion." Melissa said. "And Captain Levi is humanity's strongest soldier."

For some reason, I strongly doubt that. Mephisto thought. And if its a legion, that means we should have at least six thousand soldiers here, but I don't see nearly that many. "Is there anything I should avoid doing in front of them, or can I rely on standard Imperial customs?"

"Imperial?" Melissa said, cocking her head. "I don't know what you mean, but shake their hands, and try to be polite."

So, here I go. Mephisto thought, though I never would have imagined that I'd be one making first contact with a lost branch of humanity.

Mephisto walked into the command tent. It was sparsely outfitted, clearly made to be easily transported and assembled. There were two men standing over a map table in the center of the room surrounded by several aides; a tall, blond-hair man bearing an impressive-looking rank insignia, and a shot, dark-haired man with a less ornate insignia.

"So," the short one said without preamble. "Who the hell are you, and where did you come from?"

Mephisto wondered if this was one of the commanders that the girl had told him about. On one hand, Mephisto was fairly sure that he would have had a similar reaction had their roles been reversed. On the other hand, high commanders were rarely so tactless, particularly in diplomatic situations. In the Imperium of Man, the way an officer conducted himself could make or break his career, and on some worlds was even more important than leadership skill or military acumen.

"I am lieutenant Mephisto Argon of the 33rd Alkanian Grenadiers, of the Imperial Guard."

"A lieutenant?" The shorter man scoffed. "You're 'Imperial Guard' couldn't be bothered to send anyone important?"

The tall man who appered to be the commander gave his counterpart a stern look. "They could have sent a lieutenant for any number of perfectly valid reasons. Keep in mind, Levi, that we don't even know if one of their lieutenants is comparable to one of ours. For all we know, he is the lieutenant commander of this Imperial Guard."

Lieutenant Commander of the Guard? Mephisto thought, trying to keep the grin off his face. Come to think of it, I don't even know if anyone is in charge of the Guard.

"No, I was the highest ranked officer of the Regiment on the ground who could come safely." A technical lie, but I doubt that the Expedition Commander would be willing to risk his own skin on something like this.

The taller man opened his mouth to say something, but the shorter one, Levi, beat him too it. "So you people are responsible for this thing coming here?"

"What, you mean the ship?" Mephisto said. It was so hard communicating with people who didn't know the proper terms. "That was us."

Levi stepped out from behind the table and walked over the Mephisto.

Then he hit him in the face.

"I lost good people today chasing after your stupid 'ship'" Levi said. "Now, maybe we can talk.

Mephisto would have responded, but his face hurt too much.

[x]

After a few seconds, Mephisto recovered from the blow. "Alright," he muttered, "I suppose that I deserved that." He wasn't really sure that was the case, but it was probably best to avoid offending the locals. Who knew what strange customs they might have developed in they're millennia of isolation.

"So, who are you, and where did you come from?" Levi asked, still looking at Mephisto with an unpleasant expression on his face.

"What my associate is trying to ask," the other commander, Erwin, said, "is how you survived the titans outside the walls without the Recon Corps ever finding your people on one of our expeditions."

"Frankly, sir?" Mephisto said. "We come from beyond your world. You do know what a planet is, correct?"

"Yes, we know what a planet is." Erwin shook his head. "But you travel between them? How? How have our astronomers never spotted one of your ships before. They seem quite... noticeable."

"How? Plasma engines, gravity control, mass manipulation, Warp Drives, and the Astronomican." Mephisto said. "And you've never seen us because this is the first time servants of the Imperium have stood in the light of your sun. We come from other stars."

"Are you saying that each star is a sun of its own?" Erwin said. "I- we- I mean- we suspected such a thing might be the case, but..."

"Each light in the sky is a world." Mephisto said. "And the Imperium rules a countless number of them."

"Then why bother coming here?" Erwin said.

"Our Warp Drive malfunctioned." Mephisto said. "Now, I think we have more important matters to discuss. First of all, do you have the authority to appoint an ambassador to a foreign political entity."

"Foreign political entity? You mean like another Kingdom?" Erwin said.

Is pause implies that his people are politically unified, I suppose. Mephisto thought. They must have next to no experience with diplomatic relationships. They'll be steamrolled by the Administratum diplomats unless...

"The first thing you have to do is appoint me as your Ambassador to the Imperium Of Man." Mephisto said. "Say you'll do all of your negotiations with the Imperium through me, at least for now."

"And how do we know you're not just some con man looking to pull a scam?" Levi said, frowning.

"Because I let you punch me and didn't start a war?" Mephisto said. "Besides, I might be able to help you out."

"What do you mean?" Erwin said. "I have a campaign to run."

"That's it exactly." Mephisto responded. "The forces we have here are only a fraction of the 33rd Grenadiers. We have weapons you can barely imagine. And I may be able to get you some form of treaty agreeing to help you deal with your titan problem. I assume that your scouts told you what we did to the titans attacking our ship, correct?"

"Yes, they did, but..."

"What's in it for you?" Levi said. "You just clear out all the titans for free? Fat chance. What do you want in return?

"Soldiers." Mephisto said. "That is usually what a Feudal World is best at providing. We're on our way to a campaign, and we need men."

"But I thought you said that the Imperium ruled countless worlds?" Levi said skeptically. "What could you possibly need us for?"

"Facing a threat like the titans will have meant you've built a defense force, if nothing else." Mephisto said. "And There is no peace amongst the stars. Even now, humanity is pressed on all fronts, and we need everyone we can get.

"And what about us?" Erwin said. "Once you pure the titans, if you're really capable of doing that, what do we stand to gain from such a relationship with your people?"

"We have many things to offer a civilization such as yours." Mephisto said. "The Mechanicus can provide you with advanced machines to improve life inside your walls. Medicine that actually works. Fertilizers that can turn dust into a garden. That sort of thing."

"And you want our people to fight and die for you in return?" Levi said, putting his hands down on the table. "Why do you think we would agree to that?"

"Because its in your very best interests to support the Imperium of Man." Mephisto said. "You are human, aren't you? Do you have any idea how lucky you are that the first contact you've had with the Galaxy at large is with an Imperial Guard Regiment? Not Xenos slavers, or unscrupulous rogue traders, or a Chaos Warband?"

"You'll have to enlighten us," Erwin said. "As I have no idea what most of those things are, though I can guess from your tone that they are less than friendly toward you."

"The are, as you put, less than friendly toward all of mankind." Mephisto said, frowning. "The best among them consider us to be less than animals. The worst are implacable killing machines that silently glide between the stars on machines a thousand times the size of the ship I came here in, harvesting life for there dark masters, or locusts that prey on entire worlds. Trust me when I say that you can find no common ground with such abominations."

"If what you say is true, then this is no place to have such a monumental conversation." Erwin said. "Though for some reason, I think that I am starting to trust you. You seem earnest, if nothing else."

Erwin turned to Levi. "Alert the troops, we're returning to the walls. We've found what we came here for."

Then he turned towards Mephisto. "And you're coming with us, Ambassador."

[x]

"He did what?" Colonel Richardson said, clutching the vox caster in disbelief. "Tell me one more time what happened."

There was some lag in the communications, but the Glory of His Wrath was close enough to the planet to allow for live voice communications. Still, it was several seconds before he received a response.

"Lieutenant Mephisto drove out in his Chimera to recontour the battlefield after the conflict with the local megafauna. He did this for a time, then contacted an element of the local military, and engaged in dialogue with their leaders." The Expedition Commander said. "His report is a bit sketchy on what exactly happened, but somehow it led to them appointing him their ambassador to the Imperium of Man. He is not presently available for further questioning, as he left with local military to accompany them back to their walls."

"I see." Richardson said. This was great. If the locals were willing to appoint an ambassador, that meant they were willing to talk, meaning there might be some chance to induct them into the Imperium without a wasteful conflict. The Expedition Commander was saying something else, but Richardson had tuned him out as he considered the possibilities of a peaceful conquest of this planet.

"Sir, sir?" Richardson looked up, then remembered he was talking over the vox.

"What were you saying?" He asked.

"Sir, I was asking what disciplinary measures you intend to take against this officer." The Expedition Commander said, sounding smug.

"And why would I want to do that?" Richardson responded. "He won us a diplomatic victory, and it is not my policy to punish winners."

"But sir, he disobeyed orders and acted without regard for the intentions of his superior officers!" The Commander said, sounding surprised. "Aren't you going to have him executed?"

"This Mephisto character took a tactically reasonable action within his own authority, and when the situation evolved beyond the scope of what his orders covered, he acted as he saw fit, as contacting a superior may have introduced an unacceptable delay into the situation." Colonel Richardson said. "Furthermore, he won us a considerable victory, and as I said, I dislike executing winners."

Richardson cut the vox connection. The man he was talking to displayed all the signs of a bootlicker to his superior officers, albeit one with a considerable eye for detail. That, given the previous management of the Regiment, had likely gotten him promoted far beyond his abilities. It was a flaw in the institutional culture of the Regiment that such men could be promoted to officer rank at all at, and a weakness of the organization that so many of its officers were cut from that cloth.

Whoever this Lieutenant Mephisto was, he had to be some kind of diplomatic genius.

[x]

"Wow." Mephisto said, losing all sense of military decorum. "This maneuver gear is pretty cool. Can I poke it?"

It was probably for the best that Melissa couldn't hear him over the sound of the Chimera's engine. The two had been introduced after Mephisto's discussion with the commander of the Scouting Legion, and Melissa and her squad had been assigned to 'escort' Mephisto and his Chimera on the way back to Wall Rose, as she was less bothered by his machine than many of the other Recon Corps soldiers.

Mephisto had been in contact with higher command, and the Regimental Commander had told him to stay his course in negotiations with the locals, and to try to secure a mutual defense treaty. However, his first priority was on not causing an incident that would sour diplomatic relationships with the natives when the professional diplomats arrived.

"What did you say?" Melissa said, turning toward Mephisto, who was in the cupola of his Chimera, without taking her eyes off the road ahead of her. "I couldn't quite hear you."

"Nothing." Mephisto responded, looking away briefly. "I was just saying that your maneuver gear looks rather impressive. How good would you say you are with it?"

"Me?" Melissa said, jerking her head back, "I don't know. I'm just a trainee, after all. I did finish 57th in my class, though."

"Out of how many?" Mephisto said.

"A few over two hundred." Melissa answered. "I mean, I scored near the top of the class in shooting, but that's not weighted as highly as Maneuver Gear."

"Near the top in shooting?" Mephisto said, sounding impressed. "That's pretty useful."

"Not against titans it isn't." Melissa said, looking down. "You've seen how effective firearms are against them."

"Well sure, a lasgun won't do much, and I can't imagine that the guns you'd have on a wold like this would be much better. Still, I think a rocket launcher or heavy machine gun might work wonders against them. After all, ballistic skills apply to all weapons."

"Rocket launcher?" Melissa said, sounding confused. "Heavy machine gun? Those sound like weapons, but what are they?"

"A heavy machine gun is like a normal gun, but it fires a large bullet, and it fires much more frequently. A rocket launcher a... well, do you know what a rocket is?"

"Of course. But I don't see how it would be useful as a weapon." Melissa said, as if that should be obvious. "They tend to go everywhere but where they're pointed."

Mephisto chuckled. "The rockets we have are somewhat better. Anyway, how do you think you'd do as a sniper?"

"A sharpshooter?" Melissa said. "I don't know. That's more something the Military Police would be interested in. Not much good against titans."

Mephisto paused for a moment. "There are other enemies out there. Things that make these titans look positively tame in comparison."

Melissa paled. "Make the titans look tame..." She shook her head. "That's terrifying. What kind of monsters are they?"

"Don't worry." Mephisto said, waving a hand. "Most of the threat to the Imperium comes from traitors and separatists. There are other things, but most of them aren't all monsters like the titans are."

Abruptly, a red flare shot into the air in the distance. Melissa's head snapped toward it. Mephisto eyed it warily.

"What does that mean?" He asked, not taking his eyes off the flare falling in the distance.

"A titan has been spotted." Melissa said, reaching down to her belt and drawing a pistol. She withdrew a small cylinder from a pouch next to the holster and slotted it over the muzzle of the pistol, raised the weapon, and fired it into air.

The projectile rose rapidly, trailing a thick column of red smoke behind it. As it flew, another flare rose into the air in the opposite direction of the first.

"The formation is designed to maximize detection range." Melissa said, "When a titan is spotted, whoever sees it fires a red flare to signal the danger to the commander. Then he fires a green flare to signal the direction change for evasion."

"But what about-"

A black flare shot in the air from the same direction as the first red flare.

"Aberrant." Melissa muttered.

"What do you mean?" Mephisto demanded.

"A titan that isn't like the others." Melissa said. "Its-"

As Melissa was speaking, Mephisto had drawn his Magnoculars and raised them to his eyes. "Big." He announced. "At least twelve meters. And coming this way!"

One of the other squad members, who had been silent until this point, whirled around. "How the hel do you know that? All we know is that it-"

"Magnoculars." Mephisto said. "They track heat and amplify vision."

"How-" The man shook his head. "Nevermind. What do we do?"

"We have the three of you, and you're maneuver gear." Mephisto said. "And we have this Chimera. The multilaser did a good enough job against the titans the first time, and I've been wanting to see your maneuver gear in action."

"So then we fight?" The second man, the squadleader, said.

"What other choice is there?" Mephisto said. "All He asks is that we die standing."

The titan closed with the small squad of soldiers, its fifteen-meter bulk allowing it to ignore terrain features that would have stymied a smaller foe. Mephisto watched out of the Cuopla of his Chimera as the beast approached, laspistol in hand. He was fully aware that the weapon would be functionally useless against the massive creature, but it was a good prop for gesturing while giving orders.

Mephisto signaled the gunner of his Chimera to hold his fire as the titan drew nearer to the squad. There was a chance that the barrage of las bolt fire it could produce could cripple the beast, but given their impressive regenerative capabilities, the gun might overheat before he could burn through to hit the thing's weak point.

As Mephisto was considering the approaching titan, the leader of Melissa's squad signaled to the soldiers under his command. They did something with their belts, then unlatched themselves from their horses, and the strange boxes attached to each of the soldiers at the hip began to bounce from the gait of their steeds.

The titan came within a hundred meters, and all the soldiers stood up in their stirrups.

"FORWARD, FOR THE EMPEROR!" Mephisto shouted, raising his laspistol and firing a single ruby-red beam toward the eye of the titan. It struck with a crack of superheating fluid, vaporizing water and burning flesh. The titan screamed and reached up to cover its eye, disrupting the flow of steam coming off of it, but didn't stop running forward.

At the same moment, the leader of Melissa's squad jumped out of his stirrups and fired the wires on his maneuver gear. They snaked out and struck the titan in the upper torso, pulling the man forward into the air. A trail of vapor formed behind him as he vented gas pushing him off course. Instants later, the other two soldiers did the same thing, Meliss pushing herself toward the opposite side of the titan as her squadmates.

The moment the soldiers were clear, arching into the air, Mephisto struck.

"FIRE!" He shouted, waving his laspistol forward. The gunner on the Chimera followed his lead, firing a barrage of laser fire across the ground toward the titan.

The beams traveled at the speed of light, shooting underneath the soldiers and striking the titan in the calf. A fan of light formed as the turret swiveled rapidly, its beams sawing through the flesh on the front of the titan's legs.

The creature's lower legs collapsed with a sickeningly audible crunch, and in dropped downward, then fell to its knees. The soldiers reacted immediately, one of them firing a new line to use as an anchor.

They swung around the back of the titan, and the squad leader went in for the kill. He fired a wire to just next to the weak point of the beast and began to reel himself in, twin blades at the ready. The squad leader shot toward the titan.

At the last second, the beast shifted. The disruption shot up through the wire and knocked the squad leader off course. As he tumbled in the air, he vented gas, trying to correct his course, but as he closed with the titan, it became clear he was off course. He struck, twin blades scoring deep into the flesh of the titan, clouds of smoke trailing from behind the weapon as blood splashed out of the long cuts. The titan screamed again, but didn't go down, and as the squad leader shot off into the sky away from the titan, reached around and grabbed the man.

Melissa let out a short gasp as the fist of the titan closed around her commander. "What do we do?" She shouted, as the titan brought the squad leader painfully slowly towards its mouth.

"WE FIGHT!" Mephisto shouted, and kicked the driver of the Chimera in the shoulder. The vehicle spun around on its treads and began to drive forward towards the titan. The turret swiveled, and another fan of ruby light lanced forward, this one vertical, and struck the titan in the torso. The titan's head turned away from the soldiers flying around it, and its sole remaining eye focused on the Imperial vehicle fast approaching it

As the Chimera jumped forward, Melissa fired a wire toward the back of the titan's neck and activated her grapple. She shot forward, and, as she did so, vented gas, putting herself on an evasive course toward the creature.

Melissa landed on the nape of the titan's neck, grapples straining as the held her body upright. Her blades flashed, and the tips of the weapons stuck the edge of the cut the squad leader had made, which was already beginning to heal, then sank deeper into the flesh of the creature, sinking up to the hilts as she sliced.

A great chunk of flesh came free as Melissa finished her slice, and the titan began to fall. The third man in Melissa's squad swung downward, using the falling titan as an anchor, and grabbed the squad leader as he fell out of the titan's now-nerveless fingers. The pair of soldiers landed hard, but climbed to their feet and began to walk, supporting each other, toward their waiting horses.

Melissa rode the neck of the titan all the way to the ground, falling into a crouch as the thing struck the ground and jumping down gracefully as the body became enveloped in a cloud of steam.

Mephisto raised his hand and ordered the Chimera to a halt. Melissa ran up to the stopped vehicle and looked up at Mephisto.

"How... What was that weapon?" She stammered, eyes fixed on the turret-mounted multilaser. "That was incredible, what it did to that titan."

"This is a multilaser." Mephisto said, reaching down and patting the barrel of the weapon gently. It was still warm from the bursts of firing. "It fires a beam of coherent light at a high rate of cyclical fire. Remember those machine guns I was telling you about?"

Melissa nodded.

"This is the same idea, but with lasers." Mephisto explained.

As Mephisto began to explain the finer points of multilaser the other two soldiers stumbled over, still supporting each other and leading their horses.

Melissa rushed over to the pair and began to converse with them in quick, hushed tones. After a few moments, she turned back towards Mephisto with a grave look on her face.

"The squad leader is wounded." She said.

"How bad is it?" Mephisto asked, looking at the man.

"He was crushed a bit by the titan's first. We think he broke a few ribs. Plus he landed hard and damaged his leg. We don't know how badly."

"Can he make it back to the walls?" Mephisto asked.

"I don't think he can ride." Melissa said, shaking her head. "If he can't keep up with the formation, the regs are clear. We have to leave him.

Mephisto shook his head. "That won't be necessary." He said, reaching down into the turret of his Chimera.

He pressed a button, and the back ramp of the Chimera began to slowly slide downwards, revealing the cavernous interior of the vehicle.

"Need a lift?"

[x]

Mikasa dismounted and began to lead her horse past the gate and into the town square of the Karanese District. She looked at Eren, who was leading his horse next to her. She had been assigned to a different area of the formation, but as the Scouting Legion collapsed inward toward the gate, the formation disintegrated and she had found him.

She look distrustfully at the members of the Special Operations Squad who had escorted Eren on the mission. She couldn't shake the feeling that they should be dead, but that wasn't relevant. What was important was Eren. They had brought him back safely, without needing to resort to using his Titan Shifting abilities. For that, she was thankful.

Eren was all she had left. If they had failed to bring him back safely... Mikasa tried to banish the dark thoughts from her mind. That wasn't relevant. What mattered was that Eren was back safely.

Still, she couldn't quite shake the urge to activate her maneuver gear and attack the Special Operations Squad. It would be easy. There were plenty of anchors to use, and no one would be expecting it. She could strike them all down and move on to the Commander of the Scouting Legion before anyone would be ready to face her. She could bathe in their blood. Surely these dogs of the King deserved to die for what they had done to Eren.

As Eren walked over to her, Mikasa suppressed the temptations. That would do nothing to protect Eren, and would only lead to her being unable to protect him.

"Hello Mikasa." Eren said, sounding tired. He looked worn down from from the mission, as they all were, but she could see no visible wounds.

"Hello, brother." Mikasa said, voice even, almost emotionless. "The mission went well. Very few soldiers were lost."

"But what did we accomplish?" Eren said. "We rode out, camped around that thing, and came back."

"Maybe the commanders found what they were looking for." Mikasa said. "Maybe the mission was a failure. But we killed titans. Shouldn't you be happy with that?"

"I know we kill titans." Eren said, looking down. "But I was really hoping we'd learn something from this mission. It just seemed so different. For a moment, it seemed like everything changed."

"I know what you mean." Mikasa said. "I'm just glad you're safe."

"Thanks, Mikasa." Eren said. "I have to go back to Captain Levi. They'll be looking for me-"

"Stay." Mikasa said. "Walk with me. If anyone says otherwise, they can come to me."

Eren chuckled, then his face turned serious. "I've heard some things, though. Like that thing that came out whatever it was that we found."

"I've heard the rumors." Mikasa said. "They said that a fifteen meter deviant titan attack the formation, but that thing destroyed it."

"Really?" Eren said. "I heard it saved a squad of soldiers from a crawler."

"Humm." Mikasa raised her hand to her chin as she considered what she had heard. "Whatever is happening, that thing must have powerful weapons. Orders of magnitude more potent than ours."

"That's disconcerting." Eren said. "But if that's true, then maybe they can help us destroy the titans. Think about it. With weapons like those..."

[x]

Reiner Braun watched from the top Wall Rose. He had requested the assignment, despite the time off normally given to the men and women of the Scouting Legion after a mission, success or not.

He let out a sigh as he watched a vast black shape, made tiny by distance, came into sight flying high above the walls. It was an ugly, brick like shape, but it possessed a certain elegance as it flew, which was truly a wonder in itself.

For a man capable of transforming into a titan, that was quite a statement.

He knew more about this new force than most other soldiers. He had been trained in information gathering, and had been at the head of the formation when it encountered the mysterious object now flying toward the walls. He had been the first to maneuver in, and had seen what had happened when the newcomers turned their weapons on the titans.

This changed everything. The search for the Coordinate was important, but, if these newcomers allied with the Kingdom, as seemed likely, then a change was in order.

As the sun set in the distance, Reiner Braun turned away from the land he had doomed, then looked upward at the stars now becoming visible. The stars where, if what he had overheard in the commander's tent was correct, he would soon walk.

Could redemption lurk out there?


End file.
